


In the Wind

by adrenaline-whump (addie_wordsmith)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Captivity, Gen, Held Hostage, Kidnapped, POV First Person, Whump, Whump with plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 07:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17956250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addie_wordsmith/pseuds/adrenaline-whump
Summary: Caden Hale is a Memphis bounty hunter tracking down a fugitive.  When Owen Casey shows up in the last place anyone would have expected, Cade's night goes downhill fast.





	In the Wind

It’s fucked up, in a way. None of it would have happened if any little thing had been different. If I’d been more alert – but Hank’ll tell you it was all his fault. He said he didn’t blame me, that he would have done exactly what I did.

Usually we don’t run into much drama. I mean seriously, forget anything you’ve seen on TV. Half the time the “fugitives” we bring in are people who forgot when their court date was, or couldn’t get a ride there. A few skips are dangerous, sure, but if you’re smart and careful and keep your head on a swivel, it’s a manageable risk. And “smart and careful” is pretty much the definition of Hank, so when he wants to put together a pickup team, we’ll go wherever he tells us to.

So when he called and was like, “Hey, Cade, what do you think about heading over to North Carolina?” that wasn’t typical but I was interested. North Carolina’s a fair haul from Memphis, but Hank had gotten some leads on a pair of skips, Owen Casey and Tara Michaels, who were both wanted by Blakeley County. They were supposed to be traveling together, and the payoff for both of them would make the trip worth it. What’s funny is that I’d picked up Owen once before, like three years earlier with a different crew, and drove him back from Franklin. I told Hank what I remembered about the guy, basically that he was average size, and when we rolled him up before, he didn’t put up a fight.

The other reason we went was because Amy’s family has a cabin up there, and they said we could use it for a few days. Amy’s one of our part-time crew, ex-Army like Hank. Hank likes to have her along if we’re after a female, since it seems like girls feel safer surrendering to another girl. On the other hand, males tend to get distracted or confused when they encounter Amy in full gear, so that works too.

The place she told us about was usually rented out, but her folks thought they were going to be up there that week, and then they changed plans. Amy didn’t come with us on this trip, but they gave us the family rate anyway, and the cabin was a lot nicer than what we’d typically get. It was up a mountain and down a little road, nice view from the back deck. The inside was all wood and dark green and navy blue, and the lamps and curtains and stuff all had bears on them. Donnie thought it was hilarious and said he was going to decorate his apartment entirely in bear as soon as we got back.

So it was me and Donnie and Hank and Alex, and the first day we didn’t have much luck, but the second day Tara turned up at her mama’s trailer and we managed to roll her up there. She didn’t fuss and just seemed sort of resigned. For girls we typically don’t go all raid mode anyway; we just tell them who we are and ask them nicely to come with us. Her mama was a little freaked out, but Hank calmed her down by being polite and respectful. He’s good at that kind of thing.

Tara wouldn’t say where Owen was, which wasn’t too surprising, but we were hoping to find them together. We couldn’t really hang on to her and look for him at the same time. Hank told Donnie he’d drawn the short straw, and he got to run Tara back to the Blakeley County lockup in Irvine, while we looked a little more for Owen. That was Hank being nice; Donnie was the least intimidating of us four to look at. Hank’s the tall wiry type; I’m pretty average, I guess, and Alex is a fucking wall. Dude’s probably got thirty pounds on me and it’s not fat. Donnie’s a little on the short side, friendliest guy you’ll ever meet, always in a good mood, and an absolute viper in a fight. People underestimate him, and it’s so damn funny every time. If you want up-front intimidation, you bring a big boy like Alex, but if you want an ace in your back pocket, you bring Donnie. 

There was some discussion of whether Donnie wanted to stop back by the cabin and get his stuff, but Hank said we’d probably only stay another day at most, and we could bring it back with us. So Donnie headed west with Tara, and the rest of us put heads together on where we might dig up Owen. The most likely was that he would show up at the mama’s place in Sylva, where he thought Tara was, unless he was still in Asheville where Hank and Richard had been tracking him.

Hank talked to the mama a little more, who as it turned out wasn’t a fan of her daughter’s no-good skip of a boyfriend, and mama promised to call Hank if Owen showed up looking for Tara. We went on to Asheville, the three of us. 

We nosed around where Hank’s info had pointed us, and managed to turn up an old black guy running a soul food dive, who rubbed his chin and said yes, he’d talked to those kids. They were looking for some cash work, and he told them he might have something next week, but they said they had to go on to Charlotte and did he know anyone there who might need some temporary help. Which was interesting because Hank had an address for a cousin of Owen’s near Charlotte. 

We talked through the options. We might hear from Tara’s mama, but Owen probably wouldn’t stay put once he knew Tara had been picked up. He’d probably run, and he might just go on to the cousin’s place. You wouldn’t think skips would be that obvious, running to family, but they do it all the time. If we could get ahead of him and be waiting for him, if and when he showed up at the cousin’s, that would be perfect. The thing was, we were standing in Asheville, Donnie was on the road heading west in one truck, the three of us were in Hank’s Tahoe, and a bunch of our stuff was in a cabin an hour the wrong way. 

No problem. Hank looked up a car rental place and we got there before they closed. I was tasked to go back and get all our crap, then meet them in Charlotte. If they saw Owen before I got there, they’d contact the local cops to ask for an assist. I tossed my gear in the back seat of the rental and headed back to the cabin.

 

You know, you instinctively think of the place you sleep as safe, even if it’s more home base than home. The cabin was just like we left it, door locked and all, nothing out of the ordinary. I flipped on the nearest light, dropped my jacket on a chair, and walked into the kitchen. There was a red and gold sunset that was perfectly framed by the window over the sink.

And a voice behind me said, “Don’t fucking move, Cade.”

Do you know what an adrenaline dump is? It’s when shit goes seriously wrong and that wave of hot and cold punches you in the gut, crashes over your head, and races down to your toes in about a second and a half. I’ve had it happen enough to recognize it, and it gets a little easier to deal with, but not much. I waited out the wave, then slowly turned my head to look over my shoulder, just enough to see Owen step out of the hallway, pointing something dark and metallic my way with both hands. 

“I said _don’t fucking move_ ,” he repeated, furiously intense. “If you _twitch_ the wrong way, I will turn your head inside out.”

I believed him. I still had my Glock on my hip. He knew it, I knew it, and we both knew his trigger pull would be faster than my draw.

In my head, I was like _WHAT. THE. FUCK._ Because how in the _fucking hell_ was he _here_ of all places? He circled behind me like a stalking wolf.

“Step to your left,” he said, “and put your hands on the cabinet in front of you.”

I could guess where this was going, but I didn’t have any bright ideas for how to win this particular scenario. I’d lost as soon as I dropped my guard inside the cabin. It’s the kind of stupid that can get you killed. I moved as directed and listened to the floor creak as he approached me – slowly, like you’d walk toward a snake that you didn’t know if it was the poisonous kind or not. Cold metal grazed the back of my neck.

“Don’t twitch,” he warned again. A whole string of four-letter words went through my head, but I stayed still as he snagged my Glock from its holster.

“Put your left hand behind your back,” he ordered.

I didn’t immediately move. I was trying to think of something, anything, to redirect this encounter. “Owen…” I started, before he cut me off. I’m not sure what I was going to say. 

“Shut it, Cade,” he said savagely. “You wanted to find me; you found me. Now it’s up to you, do you want to die right now? Or do you want to cooperate with me?”

I answered with about the same heat, “Well, if it’s a choice between getting shot in the head now, or later, you might as well fucking get it over with.” 

It might have been a mistake; hell, it could have been the last thing I ever said. I said it because – well, partly because of adrenaline, and partly because – it’s hard to explain. I didn’t know what the hell he wanted, and him showing up to confront me made not a damn lick of sense. I thought there was a good chance I was going to be straight up executed, and something in me said fuck it, I’d rather just get shot, than dragged out to the woods and shot. I mean, why go along with it if it doesn’t make a difference? 

He didn’t answer for a moment, and I stood there wondering if you actually hear the bang that kills you, but then he said, “Look, I want to talk to you. But I don’t fucking trust you, OK? Left hand. Now.”

OK, so we might at least have something to negotiate about. That is, if I could give him the answer he wanted, and if he felt like letting me live after he got that answer. Still, a slim-to-none chance is better than zero. I was furious at myself, at him, at fucking everything, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done was shove all that down and make myself move like he said.

He had zip ties, not really a surprise. Hardware store kind, two of them with one connected through the other. I moved my right hand when he told me to, and tried not to sweat too obviously as the second one zipped tight. 

The cabin’s kitchen, living room, and dining room were one big open area. Owen dragged one of the dining room chairs a little distance from the table and turned it a quarter turn, then shoved me into it. He walked around in front of me, still covering me with what turned out to be a beat-to-shit Ruger. He’d gotten a few more tattoos since the last time I’d seen him, and bulked up some. A lot of guys do that when they’re inside, from boredom and sometimes for self-preservation. But it wasn’t just the physical; his whole attitude was different. If you deal with skips for long enough, you start to get a spidey sense about which ones might be a problem, and Owen…yeah. Too bad for me I hadn’t seen him first.

“Where’s Tara at?” he demanded.

Shit. “We rolled her up this afternoon.”

“Answer the fucking question.”

I blinked. “You mean where is she right this second? I don’t know, probably halfway to Irvine.” I’m not sure what he thought the answer was going to be, but it wasn’t that.

“Why the hell would she be halfway to Irvine?”

“Because that’s what we do, you know that. We always go straight back when we pick someone up.”

“But you’re still here.”

“We sent her back with one of our guys.”

He looked at me like he didn’t want to believe me, but I’d answered too quick and straightforward to be lying.

“There were four of you. Where’re the other two?”

We locked eyes for a minute, and I didn’t answer him.

A muscle on the side of his jaw twitched, and he closed the distance between us in two steps, grabbed the front of my shirt, and jammed the end of the Ruger under my chin. “We can play this game if you want to, Cade,” he said tightly. “But if someone pulls into this driveway in the next couple minutes, things are going to get loud, and you’re probably going to end it here. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” was all I said. I was seething at the absolute insanity of all this. I wouldn’t have minded as much if I was actually, you know, _working_ at the time, because what we do is dangerous and we know that. But it was going to fucking piss me off to bleed out in Amy’s parents’ cabin when I was only there to grab our stuff and get out.

“Who’s Tara with?”

“One of our guys.”

I had maybe a half-second warning as he pulled the Ruger away, and then it smashed into the side of my head. It rocked me pretty well, and I guess it woke up my one smart brain cell, because it occurred to me that escalating the situation probably wasn’t the best strategy.

“What’s his _name_ , Cade?”

“Donnie,” I said through gritted teeth, wondering why the hell he cared.

“The shorter guy? Gray T-shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“Black F-150?”

“…Yeah.” 

“So your other two guys are in the Tahoe.”

I looked at him. He waited.

“Yeah.”

He let go of me and went to look out the front window.

So that was unsettling. He knew how many of us there were; fine, someone could have let him know there were four guys looking for him. It happens. But someone actually describing us in detail, like down to _names_? I mean, what the actual fuck? It’s not like we go around introducing ourselves to everyone we run into. Maybe he’d seen us somewhere without us seeing him. But even if he had, how the hell had he found this place?

“If you called Donnie and told him to come back, would he?” he asked.

“No. There’s no reason we’d need him to do that. He’d know something was up.”

He muttered something under his breath and glared out the front window for a while longer. Then he looked back at me speculatively, checked the window again, and finally nodded to himself. The Ruger disappeared into a low-profile waistband rig, and he pushed one of the living room chairs a few feet over to block the front door. They were big old chunky wood-frame chairs, the kind you always see in mountain cabins. Another one was angled toward me, and he sat down on the arm of it. 

“What do you think are the chances,” he asked, “that your crew would trade Tara for you?”

I had a lot of thoughts. What came out of my mouth was, “Oh, shit, Owen.” 

“Yes or no? What if I told them it’s the only way they’ll get you back?”

“Owen, come on. You’ve already got us on your back, for skipping out of Blakeley County. Do you really want to start stacking a bunch more charges on top of that?”

“It don’t make a difference.”

“Sure it does. It’s the difference between getting sent up for maybe a couple of years and getting sent up for ten,” I argued.

He shook his head. “Don’t matter.”

Seemed like he’d turned into one of those guys who’s determined not to get picked up again, which was not a welcome development. We run into that kind from time to time, though less often than you’d think. You want to watch out for those.

“What’s your boss’s name?” he asked. “It’s the older guy, right?”

“Owen, seriously, think about this. That’s high-risk, what you’re talking about. If they’re up for a trade, and I mean _if_ , it would take a hell of a lot of luck for it to come out the way you want it.”

“Come on, Cade, you don’t think they’d deal for you?” he said, skeptical.

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll just decide I’m an idiot that fucked up and I’m not worth it.” I may have been overstating things a little, but I was trying to talk him out of it.

“What’s your boss’s name?” Apparently he’d decided he just needed to ask me louder. Idiot. It just made me answer the same way.

“His name’s Hank, he’s retired Army, and he doesn’t fuck around. And he doesn’t generally negotiate deals with skips.”

“There ain’t nothing to negotiate about,” he insisted. “Either I get Tara back, or they don’t get you back. I will leave you in a fucking _ditch_ somewhere.”

“Is that where you really want to go with this?” I retorted, ignoring the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. “You want to add that to the list? You up for adding a murder warrant?” I kept talking as he surged to his feet. “They don’t let those slide, Owen, they’ll be after you. That what you want? For the sake of some random girl?”

 

So yeah, if you ever run into Owen Casey in the wild, keep in mind, dude has a vicious right hook. He knocked me clean off the chair. Of course, I couldn’t catch myself, so I tumbled and crashed hard on my shoulder. I hadn’t quite caught up with what was happening when he straight kicked me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. I thought, _Shit, here we go_ , and curled up as much as I could, given I was trapped between him and the wall. But he just stomped away, and I heard something crash and break in the kitchen.

I stayed down for a while to catch my breath. God _damn_ , that was not fun. I hadn’t meant to set him off like that. I just wanted him to think about what he was doing. So much for that idea.

Once I’d gotten that whole inhale/exhale thing straightened out again, I took stock and decided I wasn’t too banged up. I listened for a minute, and the cabin was quiet. No crashing sounds, actually no sounds at all right then, so I carefully hunched my way up to a sitting position and put my back to the wall. I looked up to find Owen, and he was leaning against one of the kitchen counters, watching me.

I dropped my eyes and watched his boots come in my direction and stop next to my knees. His voice came from overhead, flat and dangerous.

“You got anything else to say about Tara?”

I ran my tongue carefully over my teeth. Some blood, but nothing cracked, as far as I could tell. Lucky.

“You want to ask me again if we’re doing this?”

I didn’t respond to that either. He walked away, rubbing the edge of the Ruger’s grip with his thumb.

 

Neither of us said anything for a while. I leaned against the wall and thought about exactly how fucking bad this situation was, and how much worse it could get, and how the hell I could get myself out of it.

I’d told him the truth: a hostage exchange is risky for everyone involved. The stakes are simple; each side has someone the other side wants. It’s the logistics of the trade that are tough to nail down. Both sides want the other to go first, and neither side trusts the other. In Owen’s case, he’d have to figure out how to swap me for Tara and get away clean, without giving my team an opportunity to roll up both of them. Everything could blow up at any point in the process from negotiation to exchange, but he seemed determined to try.

Like he said, he didn’t trust me. He probably figured as soon as he let his guard down at all, I’d find a way to jump him, or take off or something. I’m not going to say he was wrong about that. It’s possible to punch your way out of zip ties, so that was definitely in my head. The problem is, it’s a big obvious movement, not something you can sneak in. I didn’t want to try it unless I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to dodge flying lead immediately after that.

Holding on to a prisoner is a pain in the ass. Trust me, I know. You have to treat it like babysitting a tiger. If you fuck it up, the result could be anywhere from embarrassing to fatal. If Owen decided I was too dangerous to keep, I’d probably also be too dangerous to let go – and he’d be pissed to lose his only chance to bust Tara out – so that might be it for me.

All this was leading me to one uncomfortable conclusion: my best bet might be to stand down and more or less cooperate, or at least act like it. I could be a fucking hero and go down fighting, but I didn’t want to go down, period. I decided I could wait for him to make a mistake I could take advantage of.

 

“Owen.”

“What?”

“Do you have a plan for how you want this to work?”

“Why?”

Translation: no. “If you don’t, you might want to put one together soon. Donnie and Tara are headed for Blakeley County. You’ll want to get them turned around before too much longer.”

He pushed himself off the counter and came over to stand in front of me again. “You think you’re going to tell me how to do this now?”

I looked up at him. “No, I don’t and I’m not. This is your show. I just know the people you want to deal with. You might as well use that, you know?”

“Why the fuck should I trust anything you say?” he demanded.

He was still keyed up, still right on the edge. I needed him to believe that things were going his way. Hell, things were technically going great for him. He’d succeeded in step one: roll up Caden Hale. He just hadn’t thought out steps two through ten yet. I had to get him working on that before he got frustrated, gave up, and shot me for the hell of it.

“I don’t expect you to trust me,” I said. “All I’m saying is, it looks like it’ll be best for me if you get what you want, and I may not fucking _like_ it, but that’s where we are.”

He turned and stalked away again. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to calm somebody down when your own heart is thumping at double speed. I shut up for a while to let him think. He ambled restlessly around the open part of the cabin. Reminded me of a bobcat I saw at the zoo once – back and forth, back and forth. He circled into one of the bedrooms and came out with a backpack. I didn’t recognize it, so he must have brought it with him. It occurred to me to wonder how he’d got to the cabin and how he’d gotten inside, since I hadn’t seen anything unusual on my way in.

The backpack went on the table. I got hauled up by my shirt front and shoved back into the chair, only this time he maneuvered my hands around the back of it, threaded another zip tie between them and locked that to the chair itself. I wasn’t going to get knocked on the floor again, at least without taking the chair with me.

He also took the opportunity to secure my ankles to the chair legs, while he was at it. I gritted my teeth (carefully, since the left side hurt) but I didn’t have a whole lot of room to argue right then, if I wanted to stick with the not-getting-shot plan.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, coming back around to face me, “and don’t make me beat it out of you. Where are the other two guys you were with?”

“Headed for fucking Charlotte.” I hoped he’d calm down a little if he knew they weren’t about to show up here any minute.

His eyes narrowed. “You better not be bullshitting me.”

“I’m not. If you know what cars we were in, you know I didn’t have that one earlier.” I nodded in the vague direction of the driveway. “We split up so they could head for Charlotte.”

“Why Charlotte?”

“Because you might be there,” I said, maybe a little bitterly.

He gave a short, sardonic laugh. “OK, then why are you here?”

 

Eventually he got around to asking the right questions. Maybe not in the right order, but he was planning instead of reacting. I didn’t exactly help, but I asked some leading questions to get him thinking in the right direction.

Things to do: call Hank, tell him what was up, get him to turn Donnie around. Also, Owen wanted to find somewhere else to hide out. He wasn’t planning to advertise where we were, but Hank might guess. Once we called him, shit would roll downhill, and Owen wanted to be holed up in an undisclosed location. Him and me, that is.

He paced some more, poking around at stuff in the cabin. Finally, he let himself out onto the back deck and shut the glass door behind him. Over my shoulder, I could see him talking on his phone.

Yeah, I did check to see if I had any chance of breaking loose, once I was out of his line of sight. Answer: no, not even on an adrenaline high. Fucking zip ties. You have to have room to work, to do that thing I was talking about. You need a quick burst of speed to put enough force and leverage on the locking mechanism. No room to move means you’re shit out of luck. There’s no point in trying to just pull your way free; those fuckers are sharp and they’ll start cutting into you.

Owen came back in, and said he had an idea where we would go next. He didn’t give any details, and I didn’t ask.

We argued about exchange logistics for a little while. He wanted to pick up Tara and take her _and_ me down the road, and said he’d let me out on the side of some highway once he’d made sure no one was following. I told him Hank wouldn’t go for that, because why would he turn over Tara without being sure that I would be OK?

“I get that,” Owen said impatiently. “But for real, if you were me, would you agree to just meet somewhere, and swap her for you and take off? They’d probably have a cop set up at every single exit down the road past that.”

I had to agree that in his shoes, I probably wouldn’t.

My suggestion was that he could stash me somewhere out of the way, I guess somewhere that I wouldn’t know where I was, but with a phone, so Hank could talk to me and make sure I was OK. Then Owen could get Tara, they could take off, and when he felt like he was far enough, he could let Hank know where I was.

Owen wasn’t too interested in my idea, since he wanted to hang on to me until he had what he wanted. He asked if Hank could pick up where I was by tracking my phone. I honestly didn’t know. I’m not the tech guy on our crew, that’s Richard. My phone knows where I am, obviously, but it’s not automatically sending my location anywhere, as far as I know, or at least anywhere that Hank could get to it. Hell, if it was that easy to find anybody by tracking their phone, we wouldn’t have near as much work.

Owen’s point was that if you _wanted_ someone to find you, there’s probably apps that do that. Which I didn’t have, but he wasn’t going to take my word for it. I told him he could look at my phone if he wanted to, but he said no, there was no point, because apps like that could be hidden, they were like spy apps.

It was a little funny, looking back, that Hank called me right then. My phone was on the table, on quiet mode like I usually had it, so it was a pretty loud and sudden buzz when it vibrated. Owen jumped like a ghost had tapped him on the shoulder, and looked at the phone suspiciously and then me. Any other situation and I’d have laughed my ass off. “Were you expecting Hank to call you?” he asked, looking at the phone but not touching it.

“I was supposed to text him when I got here,” I said. I was about an hour overdue for that, by that time.

Over the next half hour or so, Hank texted a couple of times and called again when I didn’t answer that. I knew he’d be starting to get concerned. It wasn’t like me to be hard to contact. Owen’s phone rang, and he went back out on the deck to talk some more. When he came back in, he was ready to move. He rested my phone on my left shoulder, told me what he wanted me to ask, and got it to call back the last incoming call. 

 

“Cade, what the hell, man?”

“Hank, I’ve got a problem.”

A one-second pause. 

“Go ahead.” He suddenly had the clipped tone he gets when we’re in the middle of a pickup. He told me later, he knew from the way I sounded that shit had gone sideways.

“You got any thoughts on where Donnie and Tara are at right now?”

“They’ll still be on the road. Maybe a couple hours out from Irvine. Why?”

“Right.” No easy way to say this. “So, um, Owen’s here. And he’d like to know how you’d feel about trading Tara for me.”

There was a long silence. I glanced at the phone to make sure it hadn’t cut out.

“Cade,” Hank said with careful precision, “do you have a gun to your head right now?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, as evenly as I could. Which was true; Owen had unholstered the Ruger again.

Another silence, then, “Alright. Can I talk to Owen, or are we going to go through you?”

Owen took the phone back and did a lot of demanding, threatening, and pacing. I could have told him he was wasting his breath. You want someone who stays cool under pressure, Hank’s one of the best. I knew he’d listen to Owen rant, pull out the important information, and ignore the emotion. I wished I was able to do that. It sucks a lot to have to sit there and listen to someone threaten to dump your body off a mountain. Hank’s good, though, like I said, and eventually Owen wound down a little and sat at the table as he and Hank agreed on what they’d both do next.

“Fine,” I heard him say. “I’ll call you later. It might be from another number.” He put my phone down.

“You were wrong,” he told me. “He does want to deal.”

“I didn’t say he wouldn’t, I said I didn’t know.”

“Considering what a fuck-up you are.”

I shrugged. I was fine with him feeling smug.

“Well, for some reason,” he said, “your boss seems to want you back.”

 

Hank had told Owen that he was on board with a trade, but it would take some time. It was about 8:00 pm, and Donnie had been on the road with Tara for six hours already, so it would take him at least that long to drive back. Owen had proposed the way he wanted the exchange to work, and like I’d predicted, Hank wasn’t too excited about that plan. The way they left it, Owen told me, Hank suggested they both keep thinking of ways to make it work. We had six hours to come up with something.

Owen was ready to get the hell out of dodge after that. It wasn’t like Hank would guess where we were and instantly appear in the driveway, but Owen was paranoid that he might call some local cops to check out the cabin just in case. He took his backpack out to the rental car and came back to stand in front of me. “So my question is,” he said, “how many times do I need to punch you in the face to get you into the trunk of that car?”

It was not remotely a joke. He was asking that question, seriously asking.

We came to kind of an agreement, which didn’t involve me getting punched in the face, which was good, but did involve me winding up in the trunk of the fucking rental, which wasn’t. It also included swapping the zip ties for actual handcuffs (mine, of course) and I wasn’t 100% sure how I felt about that. Harder to get out of, but less likely to shred my wrists. Not that my opinion really mattered. He snapped open a serrated knife to pop the zip ties, hesitated for a moment, and the tip of the blade pressed up just under my chin, so I had to look up at him.

“You might want to keep in mind,” he said, “now that Tara’s headed back this way, I don’t necessarily need you. I could figure something else out.”

 

So yeah, that’s why I didn’t resist really at all, at that point. Sometimes, when shit gets bad enough, you have to turn off your mind. It’s like tuning a radio in your head to the space between stations.

He had warned me that I was going to hate it, when we were negotiating the part with me not getting face-punched, and he was right. Knowing in advance doesn’t make it one bit easier. It might make it worse, I don’t know. The details aren’t important; I’ll just say that kicking my way out of the trunk wasn’t an option. I did try to figure out if I could get loose, and I couldn’t; and it hurt a fucking lot after a while, especially my shoulder that I’d landed on.

I have no idea where we went. It felt like a bunch of twisty mountain roads, and then a stretch that was straighter and mostly flat, and then eventually some bumpy stuff with some left and right turns. I don’t know how long it took, either. It seemed like hours, but it probably wasn’t.

The car slowed down and stopped, and parked, and I heard the driver’s door open and close. He didn’t come get me immediately. There was another stretch of time that seemed like it lasted forever, where I started wondering if his plan was to leave me there for the six hours it would take Donnie to get back. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but…look, however big you think a car’s trunk is, I promise you it’s smaller than that. It’s a fucking tiny box, and even if it’s got decent air exchange it doesn’t feel like it. Having a panic attack wouldn’t have helped anything, but I was headed in that direction when the trunk latch finally popped.

Getting out was harder than getting in, since by that time all of me was either hurting or just stiff. Plus I was blindfolded and my hands were still behind me, so I was pretty fucking useless. He told me to quit being a pussy, and I told him he could fuck right the hell off, but he finally hauled me out of there.

He directed me up a few stairs into some kind of building, and whatever it was, it was seriously creepy. It felt damp and a little chilly inside, and it was dead quiet. We weren’t making a lot of noise, but the little we did make echoed back to us like little soft and whispery noises.

He took me through a door that closed behind us with a heavy slam, and off to one side of it he pushed me down on my knees. “Don’t twitch and make me nervous, Cade,” he warned me. “It’d suck if I had to shoot you when we’ve gotten this far.” I sort of agreed with that, so I didn’t fight him while he unlocked one cuff, pulled my arms in front of me, around what felt like a metal pipe, and closed that one over my wrist again. The blindfold got yanked off my head, and he took it and himself right back out the door.

I was in a stairwell. It was a big industrial metal staircase with a big old grid of a handrail; that’s what he’d fastened me to. I looked up, and then up some more. There were a couple of dim lights down by me, but that was it, and I couldn’t see how high the stairs went up into the darkness.

The place smelled like dirt and rust and diesel, and my first thought was that we were in some kind of abandoned building, but it wasn’t quite that. There were the lights, for one thing, and I could hear a tiny bit of noise, a low hum, like machines running. It wasn’t all that loud where I was, but it sounded like maybe a mechanical room wasn’t too far away.

I sat down on the floor. I just sat there for a while. One of the downsides to turning off your mind, I guess, is that it’s hard to get it back in gear. I moved around a little to figure out which parts of me were hurt and what was just complaining. My left shoulder was the one I’d landed on earlier, in the cabin, so between that and the recent ride, it wasn’t happy. It was better with my hands in front of me, though. I could move my arm forward OK, but trying to move it back was like twisting a knife in there.

 

So that’s where I was for another few hours: sitting there, looking at metal stairs. I was a little surprised Owen had just walked off and left me, until I figured out that I was definitely stuck there until he let me go.

I looked around me for anything useful, but I came up empty. It’s not that hard to pick the lock on standard cuffs, especially when they’re in front of you, but you need the right tool. You want thin, but strong. Bobby pins are great if you can find one, but even a paperclip can work if you know what you’re doing. There wasn’t anything like that around.

The stairs weren’t helpful either. I couldn’t stand up because of the handrail’s crosspieces, but I was able to get enough leverage to try a few hard shoves with my good shoulder. It was all welded together, and nothing budged. The treads and the rails were coated in layers of rust and yellow paint, and even though the rust was winning right then, the whole thing was depressingly solid.

I didn’t try yelling for help, because Owen wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t even bothered to tell me to be quiet. If there was any chance of someone being close enough to hear me, he would have made sure I couldn’t, so that meant there wasn’t any point in trying.

 

It’s weird to be in a headspace where you legitimately don’t know if you’re going to be alive or dead in 24 hours, but you’re fucking _bored_. You want something to happen, but you don’t. After a while, I started thinking about what I would do if Owen just never came back. How long it takes a person to die of dehydration, or cold, shit like that. The temperature wasn’t too bad by itself, but sitting on a concrete floor will pull heat out of you.

To get my mind off that, I tried again to think up a foolproof way for the me-for-Tara exchange to go down, but nothing I came up with would work. The main problem was that any location or plan shared with Hank would immediately become suspect, _because_ Hank knew it and could prepare for it. Pick a place, and Hank could station cops down the road. Or all roads, in any direction out from that spot. Whether or not he _would_ wasn’t the point. If it was a possibility, then that plan wouldn’t satisfy Owen. Trying to get around that, I came up with some crazy ideas involving highway overpasses and trains and boats. It was all stupid shit. But I couldn’t think of anything realistic either.

Owen’s original plan seemed like the only one with a chance of working. The whole idea gave me a sinking, sick feeling, but I couldn’t think of any other way to give him enough leverage to get away clean. I gave myself about a 50/50 shot of survival. If he did what he said he would, if he left me standing somewhere on the side of a highway, his head start would last roughly as long as it took me to flag someone down and ask them to call the cops. He’d want to trade cars pretty quick, which isn’t easy when you’re on the run. On the other hand, if he kicked me out of the car in the middle of nowhere, took the head shot and drove off, he’d get a lot farther before anyone started looking for him. And he’d have a murder warrant out, eventually. I wondered if Tara was worth that much to him. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask again, though.

When he finally came back, he came down the stairs, which got my heart rate up a little. I was pretty damn sure there was nobody around but us, so when the staircase started vibrating and I saw a flashlight sweeping around overhead, I wasn’t sure what to think. I figured it was probably him, and if it wasn’t, the next most likely would be a homeless squatter, though I didn’t know how likely it was that one of those would have a flashlight. I was in suspense for a while; those stairs must have gone up five or six stories. I couldn’t help hoping just a little…but no joy, naturally. When he finally got down to the bottom, he didn’t seem to be in a bad mood or a good one. Just waiting, like me.

“Good flashlight,” he said, switching it off and tucking it into a pocket.

“You’re welcome,” I said, not meaning it at all. He’d swiped it out of my gear at some point. I liked that flashlight. It was a nice little Scorpion I’d had for years, small and light, and bright for its size.

I guess it was good that he hadn’t dumped me there and left me. It was about the only good news. He could have headed right back up the stairs and we both would have been happier. I gathered that it was too dark for him to feel comfortable roaming around any more, even with a flashlight. He didn’t want to accidentally shine it out a window and have someone get curious about lights where there shouldn’t be any.

So he hung out in the stairwell with me for a while, and of course there was absolutely nothing for him to look at or do, so he just fretted, and argued with me, and we irritated each other and that went about as well as you’d expect. I would have shut up a lot sooner if I’d been in a better frame of mind.

He was worried about Tara, thinking Donnie would be a dick to her because he was pissed off about me. I told him of all the things he could worry about, that wasn’t one to stress over. We’re professionals, we don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it, and Donnie’s better than most. Then he wanted to know what Hank was like, and I mean, what was I going to say? He’s a good boss, and yeah, he’s the kind of guy that keeps his word. Like I would have said anything else right then, though it was the truth regardless.

I’m not sure exactly when things really went south. He was just such an asshole at times. He seemed to like fucking with me just because he could. At one point he suggested that he could take a picture of me and text it to Hank so he’d know I was OK, which would seem reasonable unless you saw the smirk he was wearing when he said it. I just said, “You can do what you want, Owen, but where I’m from, we call that ‘evidence.’” So he let that drop, but it was shit like that, and me telling him to fuck off didn’t help.

After one salty back-and-forth, he told me I ought to shut up because he knew where I lived now, which was both a stupid comment and true, since he’d also snagged my wallet back at the cabin and made a point of going through it, just to be a petty little bastard, I suppose. So I told him that was fine, since when he eventually got picked up again, I’d have _his_ address and I’d send him Christmas cards every year in prison. He didn’t like that, and told me two things would have to happen for that to work out: he’d have to get caught, and I’d have to not be dead by then, and neither one of those was a sure thing.

Being really tired is like being drunk, you got to watch it or your mouth can run away with itself. And I was tired of being stuck with him, tired of not knowing if things were going to work out, or if I was going to end up shot and dumped off a mountain. I was tired of being chained to the fucking stairs.

“So how do you think you won’t get caught?” I asked. “Say this works. Say you get Tara back and y’all ride off into the sunset. What are you going to do after that?”

“You going to come after us again, Cade?” he asked. His voice was cold and hard.

“Me? Fuck no. But we aren’t the only ones who can take that contract. How many people are going to be looking for you and your little girlfriend? Where the hell are you going to go? How are you going to take care of her?

He went expressionless, but I was out of fucks to give.

“Did you ever stop and think that maybe the best thing for Tara might be for her to plead and serve her time, and get it over with and move on with her life? You afraid she wouldn’t wait for you? That’s what her mama thinks.”

“You don’t know shit,” Owen said through clenched teeth, “so shut the fuck up.”

“Have you asked Tara what _she_ wants?” I shot back. “She wasn’t any trouble when we picked her up. Does she even want you to rescue her? Are you sure she’s going to be glad to see you?”

Obviously I’m stupid and I don’t learn. I think they were legit questions, but I should have remembered that Tara was a landmine topic.

He lunged at me, and I had just enough time to think _ohshit_ and brace for impact, but that wasn’t his aim. He landed on the floor behind me, hooked an arm around my throat, and clamped down with all the strength of his stupid possessiveness.

Let me ask you, what do you do when someone does that? You grab their arm, right? How about if you can’t do that? You fucking panic, that’s what you do.

“I told you,” he spat in my ear, “to _shut the fuck up_.”

I guess strangling me would have accomplished that goal, though it seemed a little shortsighted. Not that I was thinking that clearly right then. Not that I was thinking at all. There’s some primal part of your brain that’s in charge of keeping you alive, and sometimes it just goes OH HELL NO and takes over. Only problem was, it didn’t have a whole lot of options either.

I tried to wrench myself sideways, first one way and then the other; that did absolutely fuck-all. I tried to kick off the stairs; tried to throw him off balance so he’d let up; he just cranked down harder.

“I don’t have to end you easy, motherfucker,” he said viciously. Little flickers of gray were popping up in my peripheral vision. “I will put a fucking zip tie around your throat, how’s that?”

I threw my head back as hard as I could.

I didn’t connect as well as I wanted to, but it was enough. His arm came off my throat, and as he fell back I turned halfway around and donkey-kicked him hard in the chest. I didn’t have a plan or anything, I was just done. I was 99% sure that he’d decided to kill me regardless, and I had the chance to hurt him, so I did.

I remember the headbutt and the kick. It’s a little hazy after that. He came back at me like a bee-stung bull and slammed my head into the side of the stairs. I might have tried to get in another good kick, but there wasn’t much I could do, so he basically stomped me into the ground. It was short and ugly. I ended up in curl-up-and-ride-it-out mode, which is never a good thing. I know I had a death grip on the damn rail, hoping he wouldn’t break my wrists.

There was a lull where nothing happened for a moment. I remember a hard shove, and my left hand was free and I fell backward and probably hit my head again on the floor. There were a couple more furious kicks to my ribs, and I reflexively rolled over to try to get out of range. Apparently that was what he wanted; he took hold of my elbows and yanked me up.

Something in my left shoulder went _click_ , and it was like a massive electrical shock lit up my entire arm and seared out to the rest of me, and I flat-out screamed. I remember that part crystal clear. I thought I hurt before, but fuck, he could have shot me in that shoulder right then and I might not have immediately noticed. And then metal clamped down around my wrist again and I realized I was fastened to the fucking stairs _backwards_.

He took a step back, breathing hard, and backhanded me one more time before turning and vanishing through the door.

 

I don’t know if I can exactly explain the next part. It was hard to measure time before, but this was on a whole new level. Like, literally. He’d hooked me two stairs higher than before. That was about two feet off the floor, and like I said, behind me. And I mean, it was impossible. I still couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t sit down because that put too much stress on my shoulder. Even my good shoulder wouldn’t have been real happy with that. I could kneel, and I did that for a while, but my knees were already bruised, and the concrete floor was brutal. If I slid my arms back a little, I could kind of crouch down and lean against the stairs, but that didn’t work for long either. Your legs just get fatigued after a while. Also, I had to keep shifting because the edge of the stairs was putting pressure creases in my arms, and every time I moved, I got those electric shocks from my shoulder. If I’d cussed any more, I’d have peeled the rest of the paint off the stairs.

I finally figured out the easiest thing was to sit on my heels and lean forward some. That angle wasn’t as bad. If you sit like _that_ for long enough, your legs start going to sleep. It was the least terrible option, though, so that’s what I settled on.

I had enough time to work my way through all of that, and he still hadn’t come back. My hands started going numb too, and I wondered how long it would take to get permanent nerve damage. If I had a future where that would matter. Probably not. There was blood on the floor from somewhere, and my head was pounding like crazy. I remembered a guy I’d heard about once, who got in a fight and hit his head when he fell. He thought he was OK, and then he died the next day, from bleeding in his brain. Maybe I’d get free of Owen after all, and then die later. That would be too fucking classic.

I thought once shit got bad enough, you were supposed to just pass out. Apparently that’s not necessarily a thing. No matter how much you want your brain to check out of a situation, it might just make you live through every goddamn second of it.

 

Sometime later, I heard the door open and slam shut.

I didn’t move. I was a little out of it by then. Pain isn’t something you can get used to, exactly, but I’d found a balance where it wasn’t getting worse. I’d started shaking a while before that, another thing I couldn’t do anything about. I just closed my eyes and let it wash over me.

Footsteps came in my direction, stopped in front of me, and waited. There was a rustle as he stooped down to my level. When I still didn’t react, he reached out and picked my chin up. I’m sure I made some kind of sound but I can’t remember what; moving my head set off muscle spasms in my back. I remember feeling mad because I was trying to hang on to that sense of balance, and I didn’t want to be distracted. Owen didn’t matter, somehow.

Then he said something about moving me, so that got my attention, and I managed to focus on him. He had a busted lip and there was blood on his shirt. Best thing I’d seen all day.

“You ain’t going to try to fight me again, are you?” he asked mildly.

I wanted to cuss him out. I wanted to ask him if it fucking looked like I was going to be able to fight him. I also knew the very last thing I wanted to do was piss him off more, and for that matter I don’t know if I could have put enough words together to make sense. It was about all I could do just to get out the word “No.”

I must have looked pretty rough, because he didn’t give me any more of a hard time. He stood up and reached past me, there was a familiar metal click, and I fell straight forward, bouncing off his shin and sliding down to the floor. That sucked too, but I was beyond cussing about it or anything.

I was expecting him to haul me off somewhere else, but he just stood there for a minute watching me hurt. Good thing he wasn’t telling me not to twitch then; I couldn’t help it and I couldn’t stop. He had meant to give me hell, and maybe I deserved it a little, but he might have gone a bit further than he intended. Finally, he said, “Cade, I don’t want to do that to you again. But if you’re going to – ”

“Owen,” I said hoarsely, “if you have to shoot me, then you do what you got to do. But if you’re going to fucking drag it out, I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

He thought about that for a minute, then said, “Alright,” and that was it.

We didn’t say a whole lot to each other after that. When we did talk, it was like both of us were being extra careful. He wanted to move me off the floor where I was laying, because having me there with my hands free made him nervous, no matter that at that point I had about as much fight in me as a piece of cooked spaghetti. I told him that was fine, but if he didn’t mind waiting a little longer I’d appreciate it, and he said OK.

I was able to sit up eventually, and he did go ahead and lock my hands behind me again, but I told him about my shoulder and didn’t fight him at all, and he was almost gentle about it. I wasn’t attached to anything, which meant he couldn’t leave, but he just parked himself on the stairs and did stuff with his phone.

“Hank wants to talk to you again,” he said.

“OK.”

“He’s just making sure I haven’t chucked you off a cliff yet.”

“Right.”

More waiting. I spent a little time wondering if the ride back to wherever would be like the ride to here, or if I could talk Owen into some other arrangement. Pretty pointless thinking that did nothing but give me adrenaline shakes again.

 

“Hey, buddy.” Owen’s phone was on speaker in front of me, and Hank sounded, as always, focused and in charge.

“Hey.”

“Just checking in to make sure you’re alright.”

“Yeah. I guess.” What else was I going to say?

“I think Owen and I have this thing worked out. It’ll be about another hour before Donnie gets here, then we’ll come get you.”

“Great,” I said. “What’d you come up with?”

“Just trust me on this,” he said, and Owen took the phone back.

I was annoyed he hadn’t answered my question. I’d spent so long punching my brain for a solution, I wanted to know what they’d come up with that I hadn’t. Also, how likely it was that it would all go sideways. I’d gotten used to the idea that I’d probably fucked up enough to get myself killed, but I didn’t want any of the rest of my team to get caught up in that. Or Tara, for that matter. It wasn’t her fault.

That’s probably about all you want to hear of what I was thinking, that last half hour or so. The shit that goes through your mind when you’re wrung out and hurting and not sure if you’re going to make it home…it’s not good. I thought if I somehow got out of this, if I ever ran into Owen again, I might have to accidentally shoot him before I knew what I was doing. I could plead post-traumatic shock. Everyone would understand that. _I don’t really remember what happened, Your Honor, I think it was just a reflex._

 

You ready to get out of here?” Owen said suddenly, standing up and shoving his phone into a pocket. The answer should have been yes, I guess, but I still didn’t know what to expect. He gave me a twisted grin. “You get to ride in the car this time, so that’s good, right?”

The blindfold went back on – no one ever did figure out where that building was, as far as I know – and we went back out to the car, where he sat me in the front passenger seat and even put the seatbelt on around me, I guess mainly to keep me secured a little more. He wasn’t concerned about appearances, given the fucking blindfold, which was a hell of a lot more of a red flag than not wearing a seatbelt. I said something about it, and he just said there wasn’t anyone around to see us. So we took off from there, and after maybe twenty or thirty minutes, he reached over and pulled the blindfold off and tossed it in the back seat. I recognized the skyline; we were headed back into the outskirts of Asheville.

He eventually got off the highway and turned onto a road that took us into an industrial area, lots of big metal buildings with high windows and rust streaking down the sides, some smaller buildings with signs missing half the letters. Not a popular place in the middle of the night. I didn’t see a single car other than us.

He still hadn’t said exactly what was about to go down. I was getting antsy about that.

“How is this going to work?” I asked.

“It’ll work.”

“Still the original plan, or did you decide on something else?”

He gave me a sideways glance and didn’t say anything.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

He ignored me.

“I mean, you and I talked about it for a while, and we couldn’t come up with anything that Hank would go for.”

No answer. 

My heart rate was ratcheting up because this couldn’t be good. I had the kind of heart rate you get when you start to think maybe your remaining life span should be measured in minutes. Why else would he not tell me anything? It didn’t make any sense. I’d find out soon enough, after all. Hank had avoided the question too.

It hit me all of a sudden. I think I literally saw a flash like lightning, and I gasped _Fuck_ like I’d been punched in the chest.

“Problem?” Owen said.

“He’s going to trade _himself_ for me, isn’t he?”

Owen gave me another sideways glance, this time with something like half a smile. A “congratulations, idiot” sort of smile.

I was…I don’t even know. I felt like he’d hit me over the head with a staircase again.

“His idea,” said Owen.

I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to _know_ that. I didn’t want Hank to fucking sacrifice himself because I was too stupid to think to check out a cabin before I walked straight into an ambush. “That fucking _moron_ ,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around it.

“He’s got his reasons.”

“I don’t care what the fuck reasons he thinks he has. Damn it, he’s _married_. He’s got _kids_. Did he mention that? There’s no one that I – ”

“Oh yeah? How old are his kids?”

That was out of left field, and I almost couldn’t think of the answer. “He…I think… they’re grown? I mean, they’re not _kid_ kids. But _still_.”

Owen pulled into a small parking lot, empty except for Hank’s Tahoe sitting under one of the light stanchions. We didn’t stop there; he drove around behind the building and reversed back to a spot next to a dumpster.

“Owen, _listen_ …”

“Cade, would you just shut up for once?” He pulled out his phone and sent a short text.

I wanted to talk him back into the original plan, but there wasn’t time. He got out of the car, leaving it running, and pulled me out too, holding my arm with one hand and the Ruger with the other, just as Hank and Tara walked around the corner of the building together. She looked small and fragile, with her arms wrapped around herself protectively, and Hank looked almost casual without his work gear. Tara looked up at him, and when he nodded, she walked forward unsteadily and clung to Owen. Owen managed to hold on to her while stepping back and covering both of us. I didn’t care.

“Hank,” I said desperately, “for fuck’s sake, don’t.” It was all I could get out before my throat closed up, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay standing much longer.

From behind me, Owen said, “He figured it out.”

“What I need you to do,” Hank said to me, “is walk around this building here. Donnie and Alex are there. I’ll call you when I can.” I started to try to say something else, but he gave me a look. “Cade, I’m not asking. Move it.”

When Hank says go, you go. I started walking, even though it seemed like the ground was rocking under me like a boat’s deck. When I came around to the front of the building, Alex saw me and jumped out of the truck. He started to grab my arm, and I jerked back and he checked himself. He kept his hands up like he wanted to catch me but wasn’t sure how, and said, “Easy, buddy, easy. I got you. You’re OK.”

I was absolutely 100% not OK. I felt like I’d been punched in the throat. “Why the _fuck_ ,” I croaked, “did you let him do that?”

“Easy. Turn this way,” he said, gently rotating me away from him and pulling out his keys. He got me out of the cuffs, which should have been awesome, but I barely noticed.

Donnie was out of the truck too, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. “Have you ever tried to tell Hank he can’t do something?” he asked.

I shook my head. He looked at me with sympathy. “We tried. But you know Hank.”

I said a bunch of four-letter words, and variants of them, in no particular order. There was a crunch of gravel from behind the building, the sound of a car heading out the back way, and I took three steps and my legs just gave out. I sat on the fucking ground and put my head in my hands while Donnie and Alex shuffled their feet and no doubt wondered what to do about me.

 

Donnie came over and sat down near me without saying anything. I’m sure I looked like an absolute wreck, and I was trying to pull myself together, but I couldn’t get past _I’ll call you when I can_. I thought I was going to throw up. He _knew_ I wouldn’t let him do that if I had anything to say about it. He’d told Owen not to tell me. That fucker. Both of them.

The only way I managed to not lose my shit entirely was to go back to turning off my mind. I concentrated on breathing. Inhale, exhale, repeat. Couldn’t inhale too much or my ribs would twinge pretty sharply. I didn’t think about that either.

It took me a while, but I finally managed to settle down some. I picked my head up and looked across the parking lot. There was nothing but us and a couple of pools of coppery-colored light, and quiet darkness all around. It felt wrong, like it didn’t make sense that the world could seem so peaceful.

Seeing me raise my head, Donnie quietly asked, “How hurt are you?”

“Not bad.”

“How bad is not bad?” 

“I’m fine.” I didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t want to be taken care of.

Donnie’s persistent. “Cade. Look at me,” he said, so I did. “You’re not fine. I just want to know if we should take you to a hospital now, or later.”

“I don’t need a fucking hospital.”

“Convince me.”

“It doesn’t _matter_ ,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere until we know if Hank’s going to fucking take a bullet for me.” That last part came out a little strangled sounding. If I’d just _known_ that’s what he was planning…if we lost Hank because I was an ass to Owen…I wanted to punch shit, but there wasn’t anything in range, and it would have hurt too much anyway.

He gave me a minute to get a hold of myself again, then kept on being all calm and reasonable. “Cade, nothing we do here, right now, is going to make any difference in what happens to Hank. You might as well talk to me, bud. What’s going on?” It’s hard to say no to Donnie. He’s a good guy. Sincere, I guess you’d say.

“My shoulder’s fucked up, that’s the only bad thing,” I muttered.

“What did you do to it?”

“Fell. Landed on it.”

“OK. What else?”

“Just bruises and shit.” I poked at a hole in the asphalt in front of me and picked a piece of gravel out of it. It had been a long time since anyone paved this lot.

“Hit your head at all?”

“Couple of times.”

“Knocked out?”

“No.”

“Headache?”

“Yeah, but that could be…just…everything.”

“When was the last time you hydrated?”

God. Owen hadn’t given me anything. Did I bring anything to drink in the car, before the cabin? Donnie watched me try to remember, then looked up at Alex. Alex was ahead of him, already opening the back of the truck to get at our cooler.

He held out a water bottle, and I looked at it for a second. I hated to, but I asked if he would mind cracking it open. He didn’t say anything, just twisted the cap a couple of times and held it out again.

Donnie didn’t miss that. “Is that included in ‘just bruises and shit’?”

I took the bottle from Alex. At least I could hold the damn thing. My hands were still feeling weird and prickly, like when you wake up and you’ve been lying on your arm while you slept. The water wasn’t real cold, but it was amazingly good right then.

Donnie eyed my wrists, which were red where they weren’t bruised, and asked, “How long, dude?”

I knew what he meant. He was having the same thoughts that I’d had about temporary versus permanent nerve damage. We’ve had training on how to restrain people without hurting them, but you can do it right and still cause damage without meaning to. Everybody’s different and has different tolerances.

“What time is it now?” I asked.

“A little after three.”

“Nine hours, then.”

“Jesus _fuck_.” He looked worried.

“Most of it wasn’t that bad.”

“But some of it was,” he said. A statement, not a question, so I didn’t answer. It was a little obvious. I didn’t want to talk about it.

 

Three fifteen.

“I still can’t believe you let him do that,” I said.

Donnie shrugged a little. “He feels responsible for us, you know?”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean he needs to fucking sacrifice himself for me just because I fucked up and got jumped.” I ran my hands over my head again and winced as my shoulder fired off a fresh round of stabbing pain.

“What did happen, dude?” That was Alex, who gave up leaning on the back of the Tahoe and came around to sit on the asphalt with us. “We’ve been trying to figure out how the hell you and Owen wound up in the same place.”

“Ambushed me in the fucking cabin.” Just saying it made me start shaking again.

Donnie nodded thoughtfully. “We were thinking he might have followed you there somehow.” 

“No, I mean he was there when I walked in.”

“Seriously?” said Alex. I watched both of them take that in. “Well…how the hell did he find out where we were staying?”

After a pause, Donnie said, “And what was he planning to do if we all came back there together?”

None of us had an answer for that, but I think we all felt sort of cold.

 

Three thirty.

I’d thought waiting by the stairs was bad. That was a fucking trip to Disneyland compared with waiting to see if we heard from Hank. None of us had any idea how long we were supposed to wait. No idea how long was too long.

 

Three forty-five.

“Cade,” said Donnie, “so…look, answer this if you can, but you don’t have to. What do you think…I mean, do you think Hank is screwed? Given what you know of Owen?”

He didn’t have to dance around it like that; he was asking me if Hank was going to end up dead on the side of some fucking highway. Fuck, everything I’d done over the last several hours was assuming that the only person I was risking was me.

“I don’t know,” I said, not looking at either of them. “I just don’t. He…Owen kept threatening to chuck me off a mountain. And I thought he was going to do it. Sooner or later.” I pushed some gravel around on the ground and tried to find the right words. “Hank might have a better chance than I would have had. He’s smarter than I am, better at dealing with skips. And the other thing is, this whole fucking mess was about Tara. Owen’s not batshit crazy. He’s just crazy where she’s concerned. So now that he’s got her back…”

I really hoped Tara was glad to see Owen. 

 

Around four, Donnie got me to sit in the truck. I didn’t want to shut the door though. It was a little cold, but I didn’t want to be closed in. I don’t think it was claustrophobia exactly. I wasn’t afraid of anything, I just wanted to be outside more than I wanted to be inside.

 

An hour and thirty-eight minutes after I had arrived back at the Tahoe, Donnie’s phone rang. He’s usually pretty chill, but he went pale as he carefully pulled his phone out and looked at it. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing. “South Carolina number,” he said, and answered it.

“Dude! You good? Where are you?” Donnie bounced like he was about to levitate off the ground, and he shot me and Alex a grin and a thumbs-up. I was glad I was sitting down; I felt dizzy anyway and had to close my eyes while everything went a little whirly. I heard Donnie still talking excitedly, and Alex sending up some thanks to Jesus, but it seemed weirdly far away. I can’t even tell you what I was feeling because it was more like feeling everything at once. Is it possible to feel sick with relief? I had to put my head down again and breathe.

If Hank was OK, then…it was over. Owen was in the wind, but that didn’t matter. Hank was OK. I was OK, more or less. It was over. And that should have been great, and it was, don’t get me wrong. It just hit me at the same time that I’d have to deal with _after_. I hadn’t thought there would be an after. And now there was going to be a this morning, and a today, and a tomorrow. They would probably pester me about hospitals again. And we’d go back to Memphis, and that’s where my mind seemed to lock up, because Memphis was home, and normal, and I wasn’t sure I still had a handle on “normal”.

Someone poked my arm; I looked up as Donnie held the phone out to me with his usual grin. “Hank wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. “Hank, you fucking asshole. Are you seriously OK?”

“Yeah, bud, I’m good,” I heard him say. “I’m on the side of 26, next to Officer Jackson from the South Carolina state highway patrol, who was nice enough to let me use his phone, since I told him y’all would be worried about me.”

“Just a little,” I said.

“Owen stuck to his side of the deal,” Hank reassured me. “And I thought you might want to know…we spent a lot of the drive talking about my kids, and kids in general. And…are you sitting down?”

“Yeah, I’m in the truck.”

“Turns out, Tara’s pregnant.”

**Author's Note:**

> Truckloads of thanks to everyone in the Tumblr whump community! Absolutely the nicest group of people anyone could ever want to be associated with, and I appreciate all the support and love more than I can say. Particular thanks to Whumpadoodle, my beta reader and constant cheerleader. 
> 
> For those who have asked, I do have a follow-up story in the works! If you've previously read this on Tumblr, you might have noticed I retconned the name of the county...that's for sequel plot purposes. I'm hoping to get Wind Shear finished and posted this summer, if life doesn't cut into my writing time too much.


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